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Small Grant Big Improvement is open for applications!

Have you got an amazing idea for your museum, but need a little bit of funding to make it happen? South West Museum Development’s Small Grant Big Improvement scheme is back for 2019/20!

The scheme is designed with the idea that a small amount of money can make a big difference. Grants of up to £1,000 are available to support museums to make improvements to their museums and/ or their museum’s activities in three areas aligned to the museum Accreditation Standard in Organisational Health, Collections management and Users and their experiences. Partnership grants for 3 or more organisations of up to £7,000 are also available to support projects under Organisational Health and Users and their experiences.

You can apply to do lots of different things under our Small Grant Big Improvement scheme from governance reviews to collections care activities, to marketing campaigns to testing new ways of working and more. This year, and for following rounds in our 2018-22 Programme, we particularly welcome applications that seek to improve representation of local communities within museums and through museum’s activities. So if you have been thinking about exploring co-production, embarking on outreach work, diversifying your volunteer workforce or re-interpreting your collections or anything else along these lines, then this funding can be used to undertake these projects too!

The scheme is now open for applications with a deadline of Friday 3 May 2019 for applications from museums in the south west within the Accreditation scheme in local authority areas which financially contribute to the South West Museum Development programme, excluding National Portfolio Organisations. All applications require 25% match funding and museums have a maximum of eight months to undertake their project (01 June 2019 – 31 January 2020). For full information please see our: